Let me get this straight: America is based on the idea
that an individual's fundamental rights are his or hers by
virtue of having been bornthe best evidence of which is
that you're standing here, right now. So why, in order to
exercise a good many of those rights, are you required to
present government-issued credentials?
L. Neil Smith

It never fails to interest me that the first American President to
be assassinated was also the first to try to assume the powers of a
god.

Abraham Lincoln resculpted history and the law to suit his
essentially evil purposes. He intimidated, kidnapped, even deported
those who failed to agree with him. He sent army troops to smash the
opposition's printing presses and to the polls to make sure he got
reelected.

Lincoln oversaw the deaths of 620,000 of his fellow human beings,
not to end to slavery as was widely (and falsely) advertised after the
fact, but because some of those 620,000, those who were paying 80
percent of the taxes, refused to be his slaves, and had the temerity
to stand on their rights, instead of meekly bowing to his imperious
will.

Before Lincoln, public officials, including the President, could
be seen on the streets of Washington City, walking to work, going to
lunch, enjoying the evening with their wives, families, and friends.
And there was a good reason for that. Before Lincoln, few politicians
were in a position to utterly destroy the lives of those they'd been
elected to serve. Any who might have been in that position restrained
themselves, out of common decency, a positive regard for what America
was supposed to be about, or for fear of somebody ruining their lives
back.

Then along came Abraham Lincoln, with the evil dreams that he had
inherited from Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, of buildings roads,
canals, and railroads to enrich those who had steamrollered him into
the White House, and to manage what was supposed to have been a loose
confederation of independent republics as a massive, monolithic
super-state.

Along came Allan Pinkerton, whose self-assigned objective boiled
down to nothing more than helping the President avoid having to face
the individuals he was damaging, and the American security state was
born. Today, it takes longer to cycle through White House security
than it does to see the Pope, and increasingly, there are millions of
cameras everywhere across the country, backed up by face-recognition
software.

It is the hallmark of a totalitarian regime that you can hardly go
anywhere, or do anything, without carrying your government-approved
identification.

"Progressives"left-wing socialists who used to call themselves
"liberals"can never bring themselves to believe that the Founding
Fathers really meant what they said in the Bill of Rights, especially
in the Second Amendment, because they're incapable of using words with
careful precision themselves, and often say things that they don't
mean.

And mean things that they don't say.

Some of them do believe in an armed citizenrywhenever there's
a Republican in the White House (they aren't really wrong about that,
as far as it goes). And they will defend to your death, their right
to say anything they want, no matter how evil, stupid, or crazy it may
be.

However, thanks to thousands of hours of "progressive" propaganda,
half a dozen decades of broadcast "news" and "entertainment" TV, not
many Americans realize that it is a violation of their basic rights to
require that they identify themselves in any way in order to buy a
gun. Before such laws were passed, especially in the 18th and 19th
centuries, violent crime was much rarer than it became in the middle
of the 20th, when it began to rise steeply as government at all levels
made it increasingly difficult to obtain, own, and carry the means of
self-defense.

But as I often do, I have digressed.

We have gotten to a point in Americabanks love to blame this
on Homeland Security but I don't believe them; they were leaning hard
in this direction in the 1970s and blaming it on the government even
thenwhere you need photographic identification to open a checking
or savings account. Then you need one to present at the cash register
with your credit card. Soon they'll be demanding your fingerprints and
a retinal scan just to buy an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen for
cash. Or how about a drop of blood so we can check your DNA and blood
sugar at the same time? Can't have the Faux Lady getting mad at us,
now.

Because, of course and after all, only criminals use cash. And
since there are already ten or fifteen million laws on the books, with
more being passed every day in a desperate race with an American
public increasingly cynical and suspicious about the very concept of
government, and since no one can move a step or take a breath, or
blink an eye, or even exist for half an hour without breaking one of
those ten or fifteen million laws, we are all criminalsand must be
watched.

Totalitarian governmentsMexico, Venezuela, Britainhate,
loathe, and despise cash, and they are taking whatever steps they can,
employing their phony War on Drugs as an increasingly shabby and
threadbare excuse, to make it illegal. One of the most wonderful
things about cash is that it makes identification unnecessary and
unjustifiable.

"Hold on, gonna to hafta to see some ID with that half-ounce gold
coin."

I don't think so.

Carrying cash also increases the importance of being prepared to
defend yourself at any time, anywhere, whichdespite the whining
and whimpering of giant infants who refuse to acknowledge and accept
the responsibilities inherent in self-ownershipis a very good
thing.

A.

Very.

Good.

Thing.

"Take a gun with you on all your walks," as Thomas Jefferson put
it. I could be wrong, but I don't believe he said a word about photo
ID.

So the question arises (or I'll pretend it does), how do we
unburden ourselves of all this poking and prying, all this laminated
lawlessness on the part of a government that was never authorized to
impose these requirements on those who were supposed to be its
masters?

At this somewhat revolutionary moment in the nation's history, the
authoritarian establishment has some philosophically and therefore
politically vulnerable spots. One of them, believe it or not, is the
original intrusive and obnoxious identification system, driver
licensing.

Originally intended, during the badly-named "Progressive Era",
when everything was to be registered and licensed, simply as proof of
your proficiency at operating a motor vehicle, it has now become your
leash, something you need for practically every transaction with the
government as well as what we laughingly used to call the private
sector, a means of tracking you right across the country unless you
can somehow avoid buying food or gas or sleeping anywhere but your
car.

Most drivers' licenses include your photo (notorious for making
you look like the uncaught felon that you are) and one or more of your
fingerprints. Somewhere they may incorporate your federal prisoner's
codecommonly called a "Social Security Number" or more accurately,
your taxpayer IDand there is relentless political pressure to add
computerized information like your medical history and status with the
IRS.

Did you know, by the way, that it has never been scientifically
proven that no two fingerprints are alike? It's just a Progressive Era
assumption, backed by questionable statistics, just more phlogiston,
phrenology, and globular warmuling. Piltdown Man would be proudif
he had ever existed. It can't be proven, either. You'd have to take
the fingerprints of everyone on Earth, six billion individuals, and
then crank them through every government computer on the planet for a
thousand years, beforehey, isn't that a great idea? Take all the
money being spent now on acid rain, ozone depletion, and the menace of
video gaming, and devote it to proving what government claims about
fingerprints.

And then, if they prove it, forbid them from collecting them.

Similarly, early autombile registrationand the metal plate
that went with itwas merely meant to assure all the sloppers at
the public trough that you had paid your protection money, as private
individuals have had to do for more than a century in America, for
anything too large to hide away from the unifomed or bureaucratic
racketeers.

License plates now carry your very own personal police tracking
numbers and any society organized for the convenience of the police
lately, they've been demanding the power, using OnStar and similar
services, to turn you engine off by remote controlis a police
state.

A nationwide organization, not just to prevent the imposition of
an intrusive universal ID system, but to abolish drivers' licenses
altogether, might do more for the freedom movement than practically
anything else. If anyone is still concerned with your ability to drive
a car, a certificate of proficiencywithout anything but your name
and account or membership numbercould be obtained from your
insurance company, the automobile club, even the manufacturer of your
vehicle.

The so-called Progressive Era began more than a hundred years ago.
Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover are all dead,
as dead can be, and the world is in no better shape for their having
been here to begin with. Everything these homegrown fascists believed
in and shoved, one way or another, down the throats of their fellow
Americans, has long since been discredited and is obsolete. All of
their numbers, all of their tags, all of their registration and
licensing have proven counterproductive. Every social ill that it was
claimed they would cure is a thousand times worse today than it was
then.

Americans need their liberty, Americans need their privacy,
Americans need their personal sovereignty, and Americans need their
identities back, not only for their own sakes (although that would
certainly be more than reason enough), but if they ever hope to repair
the damage done to them by so-called "progressives" of whatever era,
from the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, to that of Barack
Obama.

It must be illegal for government to track you, using your own
cell phone to betray you. It must be illegal for government to
eavesdrop on your conversations. It must be illegal for government to
open your letter mail, or to spy on your e-mail or other Internet
activity.

Given government's past proclivities and abuses, the Fourth
Amendment, which presently reads, "The right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no
Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and
the persons or things to be seized," must be amended, removing the
word "unreasonable" and establishing the harshest possible criminal
penalties for judges and other public officials responsible for
issuing or serving documents (such as so-called "John Doe" warrants")
that do not meet, in each and every respect and detail, the criteria
listed.

Get started with drivers' licenses and autombile registration,
then. Move on to the Social Security and gun laws, all of which are
unconstitutional. Shame conservatives into joining the fight. Don't be
afraid to be made fun of by the left-wing socialist media. In this
age, any publicity is good publicity, especially coming from statist
idiots whose attacks on you will be seen by others, in effect, as an
endorsement.

By a splendid coincidence, I was recently mentioned in a comments
section of the Huffingtion Post as a leading "gun-crazy"; the quote
was innacurate, improperly attributed, but I'm certain, well-intended.
And the criticism of me (not of what I didn't say) by ignorant others
had absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. But my name was
mentioned twice, and will stick with those inclined to check out my
writings.

May you, too, have such luck.

Was that worth reading? Then why not:

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has
been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics
of self-defense. He is the author of more than 25 books, including
The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability
Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles
and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased
through his website "The Webley Page" at
lneilsmith.org.

Neil is presently at work on Ares, the middle volume
of the epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Where We Stand:
Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crisis with his daughter, Rylla.

See stunning full-color graphic-novelizations of The
Probability Broach and Roswell, Texas which feature the
art of Scott Bieser at www.BigHeadPress.com
Dead-tree versions may be had through the publisher, or at
www.Amazon.com where you will also find Phoenix Pick editions
of some of Neil's earlier novels. Links to Neil's books at
Amazon.com are on his website